The Antonine Plague: The Pandemic That Shook Rome at Its Peak
pplpod30 Jun

The Antonine Plague: The Pandemic That Shook Rome at Its Peak

At the height of the Pax Romana, the Roman Empire of 75 million people seemed invincible, with gleaming cities, aqueducts, and an unmatched military. Yet beneath that infrastructure lay a biologically stressed, densely packed population living in cities that acted as demographic sinks. When victorious legions returned from the East between 165 and 180 CE, they carried an invisible pathogen that would kill up to 2,000 people a day in Rome and an estimated 5 to 10 million across the empire.

This episode unpacks the Antonine Plague as a 2,000-year-old medical cold case, drawing on the eyewitness accounts of the physician Galen, the debate over whether the culprit was smallpox or measles, and the catastrophic ripple effects on the military, economy, and trade. We also explore groundbreaking 2024 research linking the crisis to a colossal volcanic eruption at Mount Taupo and the global cooling, crop failures, and rodent migrations it triggered.

  • Why Roman cities consumed people faster than they could replace them
  • How miasma theory and the road network accelerated the spread
  • Galen's symptom descriptions and the smallpox-versus-measles debate
  • The concept of a virgin population and the staggering fatality rate
  • The volcanic-winter chain reaction that may have helped unravel an empire

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(8442)

Aespa: How K-Pop's Metaverse Group Conquered the Charts

Aespa: How K-Pop's Metaverse Group Conquered the Charts

Aespa turned a bold sci-fi avatar concept into one of K-pop's defining acts of the 2020s. Built by SM Entertainment and debuting in November 2020 with Black Mamba, the group of Karina, Giselle, Winter...

2 Jul 19min

Alanis Morissette and the Fury Behind Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette and the Fury Behind Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette went from being dubbed the Debbie Gibson of Canada, a synth-pop teen who opened for Vanilla Ice, to the queen of alt-rock angst behind a single album that sold over 33 million copies...

2 Jul 21min

Thank U, Next: How Grief Rewrote the Pop Rulebook

Thank U, Next: How Grief Rewrote the Pop Rulebook

In late 2018, at the peak of her career, Ariana Grande's personal life shattered publicly. Rather than issue careful PR statements, she locked herself in a studio with friends and champagne and made a...

2 Jul 20min

Ariana Grande: From Rejected R&B Kid to Pop Mogul

Ariana Grande: From Rejected R&B Kid to Pop Mogul

At 14, Ariana Grande was laughed out of a Los Angeles boardroom for pitching a soulful R&B album. Years later she held the top three spots on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, a feat untouched sin...

2 Jul 20min

Arlo Parks: The Cost of Comforting a Generation

Arlo Parks: The Cost of Comforting a Generation

Arlo Parks went from a teenager writing poems and listening to too much emo music to winning the Mercury Prize, touring with Billie Eilish, and co-writing for Beyonce. This deep dive traces her accele...

2 Jul 17min

Beabadoobee: The Misfit Who Escaped Her Viral Fame

Beabadoobee: The Misfit Who Escaped Her Viral Fame

Expelled from a strict Catholic school for misfit behavior, a teenager taught herself guitar from YouTube and uploaded a song as a joke under a gibberish Instagram name. Years later she was opening fo...

2 Jul 20min

Bebe Rexha: The Secret Hitmaker Who Claimed Her Voice

Bebe Rexha: The Secret Hitmaker Who Claimed Her Voice

She wrote a Grammy-winning track for Eminem and Rihanna, penned K-pop hits, and shaped the sound of pop radio, yet could walk through a coffee shop unrecognized. This deep dive into Bebe Rexha examine...

2 Jul 17min

Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and the Reclaiming of Country

Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and the Reclaiming of Country

When Beyonce performed a country song at the 2016 CMA Awards, the response was to scrub the evidence and reject the song as not country enough. This deep dive into her 2024 landmark album Cowboy Carte...

2 Jul 17min

Populært innen Underholdning

papaya
storefri-med-mikkel-og-herman
big-5-med-nils-og-harald-2
harm-og-hegseth
tusvik-tnne
enkel-servering
konspirasjonspodden
topp-3-med-wold-og-fladseth
hovla
tore-og-haralds-podkast
kjendiscrush-med-sofie-karlstad
folk-flest-med-linn-og-nils
ma-pa-behandling-med-morten-ramm
vitnemal
gi-meg-alle-detaljene
nare-venner
singel
feedback-med-egon-holstad
rss-gammal-maiden
bak-scenen